The Australian sportswear company Skins is suing the sport's governing body, UCI, for $2m (£1.2m), claiming its brand has been damaged by the Lance Armstrong doping scandal.

While Skins has never sponsored Armstrong or the UCI, it is seeking compensation for the reputational damage it says it has suffered by investing in a sport "tarnished" by doping.

"Skins was under the illusion that professional cycling had been fundamentally reformed to contain doping and to minimise the risks of scandals with which the brand of any sponsor could be associated," its lawyer, Cedric Aguet, said in a letter to the UCI that was released on Sunday on Sunday. "It has now been proven that these legitimate expectations have been betrayed on the grounds you are aware of."

Skins, founded in Australia and based in Switzerland, has sponsored teams and riders for five years and supplied race suits for the US team at the London Olympics.

The UCI recently decided to strip Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and ban him for life following a report from the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) that accused him of leading a doping programme on his teams. The UCI president, Pat McQuaid, has agreed to set up a commission to examine allegations about the governing body's conduct raised by Usada. There was no immediate response from the UCI to the Skins letter.

Aguet's letter claimed that the way the UCI, McQuaid and its former president Hein Verbruggen organised the fight against doping and dealt with the Armstrong case "is the main cause for the total loss of confidence in professional cycling by the public, which harms Skins, as well as any other sponsor or supplier".

Skins has had a partnership with the Rabobank team, which lost its title sponsor last month when the Dutch bank pulled out over the damage caused by the Armstrong case. The Skins chairman, Jaimie Fuller, said cycling now "commands little or no trust or respect from the general public".

"We believe that until it was forced into action by Usada's comprehensive report, the UCI fundamentally failed to acknowledge the issues or act to save the credibility of cycling or its commercial partners," Fuller said.